Planner
Define your plan
Create and update your plan
Your plan is automatically generated as part of your program and has a default one-year timeline. (See Program Admin for more details.) If you'd like to modify the dates, click on the admin gear on your program's plan timeline view.
Set objectives for achieving your plan
Create objectives
You can either plan objectives from your backlog or create them directly in your program's plan by clicking on the timeline. (Read our blog post for tips on naming.)
You can change the length of your objective by dragging on either end of the objective bar:
Remove objectives
Move objectives to your backlog
If you'd like to remove an objective from your program's current plan, but still want to keep it as part of your program, you can move it to your backlog by selecting "Remove" on your objective's pop-over and then "Move to Backlog." It will reappear at the bottom of your backlog with the original value, size and statement you originally defined it with. However, it will lose all work and projects associated with it.
Delete objectives from your program's plan
If you'd like to completely remove an objective from your program, select "Remove" on your objective's pop-over and then "Delete." The objective and its contents will completely disappear, while projects associated with the objective will continue to be associated with your program.
Add projects
After you lay out the objectives in your program's plan, you’ll need to add the projects necessary to carry out each objective. On the “Projects” pill, you can add any project that is on your Mingle instance to your program:
Define what done means for work in your program
To track the progress of your program's plan, you’ll need to define what “done” means based on a card property in your Mingle project. Mingle Plus automatically lists the properties and values available to create your “done” definition. Once you select the property and value, Mingle Plus will also show you which card types are tracked by this “done” definition. (Starting with Mingle 12.4, you can set your "done" definition to include all values greater than a specified value in your workflow.)
Please keep in mind:
- Mingle currently supports only:
- Managed text properties to define “done”
- Projects can belong to multiple objectives
Add and remove work
From your plan
Manually
To add work to an objective in your program's plan, you must first select the project from which you want to add work. You can manually select and add individual cards to an objective, using a filter to help surface those of greatest interest.
Like projects, work items can be added to multiple objectives.
You can remove work from an objective by selecting the appropriate checkboxes on the "View Work" page.
Using auto-sync
If you know you’ll want to track all current and future cards that meet certain criteria, you can auto-sync your filter. Once enabled, auto-sync will automatically add all cards that meet the filter criteria to your objective; it will also automatically remove all cards that do not meet these criteria.
When you enable auto-sync for a project filter, you cannot manually add or remove cards from an objective. To return to manually adding work (adding cards that do not meet filter criteria and removing cards that do), you must disable auto-sync.
When you disable auto-sync, all cards previously added from a project to your objective will remain in the objective, and you can proceed manually managing the work in your objective.
Please keep in mind:
- Auto-sync does not support filters with project level variables
- Auto-sync can be applied to only one filter (with any number of settings) per project per objective; the same project can enable auto-sync for different filters in different objectives
- Example: If Project A belongs to Objective I and Objective II, Project A can enable auto-sync for one filter in Objective I and another filter in Objective II
- To change your filter, you must disable auto-sync. Once you change your filter and re-enable auto-sync, all cards that:
- match your new filter will be automatically added to your objective
- do not match the new filter will be automatically removed from your objective
After you set or change your auto-sync filter, you will see a spinner (as in the image below) on your objective until the objective work count has been updated according to your new auto-sync filter setting.
From your project
If a Mingle project belongs to a program, you can also add and remove work from an objective from any card in that project. When viewing a card in a project that is part of a program, you will see all objectives that the card belongs to:
You can add and remove the card from all objectives in the plan, except those that have been added to objectives via auto-sync:
You can manually add or remove the card from objectives in the top group; objectives that the card has been added to via auto-sync cannot be modified and are listed at the bottom. Once you modify a card’s objectives, the change will be automatically reflected in your program.
Check the status and progress of your plan
Glance at the progress of your objective
Mingle Plus makes it easy to quickly check the status and progress of your program's plan using three primary indicators:
- Work count ratio: Mingle Plus provides a ratio of work items complete to total work items on each objective in your program's plan:
- Project progress bar: Drilling into your objective, you can see how work items are distributed across projects and how much progress has been made in each project:
- Alerts: Mingle Plus provides alerts when an objective has been running for more than 10% of its planned duration, and a project within that objective is either forecasted to be late or has not yet started.
Mingle Plus currently supports work item count only; it does not currently support sum of story point estimates.
Check for schedule changes
Mingle Plus helps you check for schedule changes by forecasting when a project may complete. Using total average velocity to date, we generate forecasts about your project's likelihood to be late in three scenarios: no scope change, 50% increase in scope, and 150% increase in scope. Alerts are triggered if your project is forecasted to finish late with no change in scope.
View work in an objective
To view the status of work in your objective, click on the “View Work” button on your objective pop-over. You can filter your view to focus on work from a specific project or on status.
Identify whom to talk to as your plan changes
Mingle Plus helps you identify whom to talk to as your program plan changes, supporting collaboration towards adapting your program to accommodate actual progress, achieve your objectives, and deliver customer value.
If you see an alert or notice schedule drift when checking the status and progress of your plan, you might understand that a project is running late and want to know: 1) why and 2) who needs support to continue moving forward.
To understand why, you can view work to see the status of work items in an objective. (You can also use the filter to limit work items to a specific project and status.) You can review which items are “done” according to your done definition and which are not yet complete.
Because Mingle Programs and their plans are directly linked to your Mingle projects, you can understand who needs support by drilling into specific cards to view their history and current status. You can see who last worked on the card and start a conversation with her, or reach out to the project manager to understand what can be done to help move the project forward.
If an alert indicates that a project in your objective has not yet started, you can access the Mingle project to see who’s working on it, review the work on deck, and speak with the project team about how best to initiate work towards achieving your objective.
